Issue #14: Thinking about the stakeholder experience

It doesn’t matter if you work for an agency or in-house. Or whether you’re a designer, researcher, developer, or PM – every project you touch has stakeholders. In short, a stakeholder is someone with an interest or concern in the project you’re working on. We spend a lot of time thinking about the customer experience and less on how it feels for stakeholders to be involved in our work. In this issue I’ve assembled content on the stakeholder experience, why it’s important, and how to improve it. Enjoy!

This is a great overview article on thinking about (and improving) the stakeholder experience. Love this on ego: ‘If you respond to stakeholders with ego, they’ll react by digging in their heels and reverting to the command-and-control structure that they’re used to.’

This article by Jared Spool emphasizes the significance of a well-run discovery phase when it comes to introducing change to an organization. It’s important for stakeholders to be participants in, and consumers of, the changes we create through our work.

The ideas in this piece about transforming an Agile process are interesting, but I like the simple notion of tracking discovery work on a physical kanban board. This constant visibility helps stakeholders see progress and shows how research becomes shippable work.